1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of fluid transfer, and more specifically to fluid transfer in connection with wells, and more specifically to hydrocarbon production from hydrocarbon-containing wells.
2. Related Art
After a hydrocarbon-bearing well has been drilled and made safe the well may then be placed into production where the hydrocarbon oil and gas are flowed to process stations where the effluents are processed and released for sale in the form of different products. “Hydrocarbon production” is a combination of many operations. First, it is necessary to bring the mixture of hydrocarbon oil, gas, water, and solids to the surface. Second, the well has to be maintained and serviced and kept at optimum conditions during its life. Third, since well fluids are typically a mixture of hydrocarbon oil, gas, water, and in some cases solids, they have to be separated before further treatment. The water is disposed of, and the oil and gas are treated, measured, and then transported via different means to their final destinations or collection points. Hydrocarbon production situations can be different under the same environment or in the same well depending on well fluid conditions which can vary tremendously when the flow regime is changed. Today, in the case of hydrocarbon oil, if the oil is not at the required quality after analysis from a laboratory or from a client's specification, the oil must be stored until it can be brought into specification. The cost of storage in oil tanks and/or crude oil tankers can be very high. The quality control of produced water from a well may require monitoring and control to ensure compliance at all times and maintain a proper history of the fluid before being discharged to the sea. Hydrocarbon gases are typically flared off if they are off-specification, possibly creating an environmental issue.
There are of course known hydrocarbon production systems presently in use, such as gas lift optimization and or multi-flow rate testing, however known methods and systems address the problems only periodically and do not provide continuous monitoring and real time adjustments of parameters as described in the methods and systems of the present invention. What is not found in the known methods and systems are continuous monitoring of the parameters of the produced mixture, optimization of both hydrocarbon oil and gas production, allowing real-time adjustment of a separation unit to be made, and which simultaneously does not generate any waste products that are unacceptable from an environmental standpoint. There is thus a long-felt but as yet unmet need in the hydrocarbon production industry for well production optimization and monitoring, including analyzing phases of oil, gas and water extracted from a hydrocarbon well, and separating the oil, water and gas mixture into oil portions, water portions and gas portions, each respective portion being substantially only oil, substantially only water, or substantially only gas. There is further lacking methods and systems for hydrocarbon production including analyzing the separated oil portion and determining if the separated oil portion meets or exceeds predetermined standards, and treating any separated oil portion that does not meet or exceed the standards to achieve those standards, and transferring the oil portion meeting or exceeding the predetermined standards to a predetermined destination via an economical means without increasing production costs. It would also be advantageous if hydrocarbon production methods and systems could be developed while analyzing the separated water portion to determine if the water portion meets predetermined water standards, and treating any separated water portion that does not meet the standards to achieve those standards. It would further be advantageous to transfer the treated water portion meeting the predetermined standards to an environmentally acceptable destination without the need for storage and expensive disposal. Finally, there has a long-felt but as yet unmet need for hydrocarbon productions methods and systems which are modular.